When marketing plastic surgery practices on the Internet, adding a search feature to your website can be very beneficial. The website for your plastic surgery practice is likely to have a great deal of content because having lots of keyword-rich content can help your rankings in the search engines. In addition, many visitors to your website will be looking for information about plastic surgery procedures, and providing them with lots of valuable content will no doubt make them happy. It’s important, however, that your visitors be able to find the information that they’re looking for, particularly if your website is a large one. An excellent way to do just that is to incorporate a search feature into your website.
Many, if not most, websites out there today don’t offer a search feature on their website. People often mistakenly believe that it’s too costly, too complex or that it simply takes too much time to add search to a site. This doesn’t need to be the case. Smaller sites may not benefit all that much from a search feature provided that they have a clear navigation system. However, larger sites with lots of content or those dealing with lots of different topics certainly can benefit from search. Search makes navigating a site much easier for visitors, providing them with a way to quickly find the information that they’re looking for. It also adds more interactivity to your website and allows visitors more control over their experience.
Adding search to your site need not be difficult or expensive. In fact, it can be very easy and, in many cases, even free. There are many site search companies out there offering free access to their search applications to smaller websites. While a paid service may provide more advanced features, a free search tool is certainly worth looking into. Your web host company may even offer a search feature, so be sure to check with them.
Site search systems work much like the larger search engines but they send out their spider’ to crawl through your website rather than the whole Web. The information the spider finds on your site is then stored on the company’s database according to your site. The company will provide you with any information you need to add search to your site, which typically involves adding a simple form consisting of a search box and input button. When a visitor searches your website, their query is sent to the company who then creates and displays a search results page for the visitor.
The are some things to keep in mind when integrating the search box into your website’s design. Many times, simpler is often better. It’s best to keep the box as a type-in field rather than a separate search page which visitors link to. This way the search box is located on every page of your website and visitors can search immediately for what they’re looking for. The box should also be wide enough to accommodate the whole of the search term rather than disappearing as a visitor types in their request. The best location for a search box is either the right-hand side or center of the top of the page.